Sisi Khampepe

Sisi Virginia Khampepe (born 8 January 1957) is a retired South African judge who served in the Constitutional Court of South Africa between October 2009 and October 2021.

Khampepe was born on 8 January 1957 in the township of Soweto, where she grew up.

The youngest of three sisters, she was born into a Zulu family.

She attended Mosepele Primary School in Soweto and matriculated in 1975 at Dlwangezwa High School in Natal Province.

During her childhood, Khampepe's mother, a domestic worker, often left her in the care of her uncle, until he was arrested for contravening pass laws and forced to return to Natal, where he was stabbed to death; Khampepe's mother blamed the apartheid law for his death.

Also formative for Khampepe's interest in the legal profession was her involvement in competitive debating in high school.

One of her coaches told her that she reminded him of politician Helen Suzman and that, if she went to university, she should study law as Suzman had.

During her vacations as a student in 1979 and 1980, she worked as a legal adviser at the Industrial Aid Society, which advocated for the labour rights of black workers.

After matriculating, she studied law at the University of Zululand in Empangeni, where she completed a BProc in 1980 and where she was, in her own words, "always one of the top in my class".

After graduation, she accepted a fellowship at the Legal Resources Centre, which lasted between 1981 and 1983.

During that period, one of her former professors encouraged her to apply for a postgraduate scholarship, and she ultimately moved to Massachusetts to attend Harvard Law School, completing an LLM in 1982.

Upon her return to South Africa, Khampepe struggled to find a placement for her articles of clerkship at any of the few firms that would allow her to practice labour law.

With the assistance of her teenage inspiration, Helen Suzman, and the Legal Resources Centre's Felicia Kentridge, she was ultimately recruited as a candidate attorney at Bowman Gilfillan, where she served her articles from 1983.

She later said that the firm's clients were resistant to being represented in litigation by a young black woman.

Born in Soweto, Khampepe entered legal practice as a fellow of the Legal Resources Centre before she gained admission as an attorney in 1985.

For a decade thereafter, she ran her own firm in Johannesburg, primarily representing employees and trade unions in labour law matters.

After she was admitted as an attorney in the Transvaal in 1985, Khampepe established her own firm, SV Khampepe Attorneys, of which she remained the sole director for the next decade.

Her clients included hawkers, civic organisations, black consumer unions (including the National Black Consumer Union from 1985 to 1986), and the Orlando Pirates Football Club.

However, she specialised in labour law, later describing herself as having been "a labour lawyer at heart, through and through".

Her firm frequently defended workers against unfair employment practices, and it also represented various trade unions affiliated to the progressive National Council of Trade Unions and Congress of South African Trade Unions.

As national legal advisor to the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union, she was a trustee of the union's investment trust when it was established in the 1990s; and from 1990 to 1995, she was the administrator of the trade unions' fund of the international Federation international des employés.

She was also a member of the Black Lawyers' Association throughout her legal career, and, in Soweto, she was a facilitator of the local street committee.

Between 1995 and 1998, she served at the appointment of President Nelson Mandela as a member of the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and from 1998 to 1999 she was a director in the National Prosecuting Authority.

On 15 December 1995, Khampepe was among the 17 individuals appointed by President Nelson Mandela to the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

She served in the commission's Amnesty Committee, which heard applications for grants of amnesty to those who had committed politically motivated human rights violations.

There she worked closely with Bernard Ngoepe, another commissioner and a judge, who became a mentor to her and ultimately influenced her decision to join the judiciary.

Upon the conclusion of the commission's work, in September 1998, Khampepe was appointed to the newly established National Prosecuting Authority as Deputy National Director of Public Prosecutions under Bulelani Ngcuka.

She held that position until December 1999.

Formerly a prominent labour lawyer, she joined the bench in December 2000 as a judge of the Transvaal Provincial Division.

She was also a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In December 2000, President Thabo Mbeki appointed her as a judge of the High Court of South Africa, and he additionally appointed her to the Labour Appeal Court in November 2007.

During this time, Khampepe chaired the high-profile Khampepe Commission which advised against the disbanding of the Scorpions.

On 31 October 2000, President Thabo Mbeki announced that Khampepe would join the bench as a judge of the Transvaal Provincial Division of the High Court of South Africa (later the North Gauteng Division), then led by her mentor, Bernard Ngoepe.

She took office on 1 December 2000.

She later moved to sit in Johannesburg in the Witwatersrand Local Division (later the South Gauteng Division).

In 2002, President Mbeki appointed Khampepe and Judge Dikgang Moseneke to lead a judicial observer mission to the 2002 Zimbabwean presidential election, the outcome of which was disputed due to claims of vote-rigging by Robert Mugabe's ZANU–PF.

Khampepe and Moseneke's report, the so-called Khampepe Report, was not published; instead, Mbeki relied on a favourable report from another mission, the larger South African Observer Mission, in endorsing Mugabe's re-election as valid.

During her High Court Service, Khampepe was appointed as the vice-chairperson of the National Council for Correctional Services in 2005 (a position she held until 2010), and Donald McKinnon of the Commonwealth of Nations seconded her as a member of the Commonwealth Observer Group to the 2006 Ugandan general election. In addition, President Mbeki appointed her to two high-profile government panels in South Africa.

After President Jacob Zuma elevated her to the Constitutional Court in October 2009, she served a full 12-year term in the apex court.

Her best-known judgment was Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture v Zuma, in which she sentenced former President Zuma to imprisonment for contempt of court.